


Fairy Lights

by keire_ke



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanov, M/M, Steve Rogers Feels, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 03:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17973515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: Through the meandering intricacies of world-saving post SHIELD's fall, strained and budding relationships, and politics he would rather stay away from, Steve tries to find what he needs.





	Fairy Lights

 

# Washington DC

Steve is not dragging his feet. He takes the steps to the Captain America exhibit one by one, at a measured pace, admiring the scenery. If he knows Bucky – and he _knows_ Bucky – he would have visited. This is prime spot for intel, after all.

Steve, therefore, makes frequent trips himself, time and geographical location permitting. He will find Bucky. If that comes about because of weeks, months of meticulous following of the faintest clues, good: if he just happens to stumble into him at the exhibit, also good. It will happen.

It will.

Granted, just hanging around the exhibit was never plan A, in fact it barely made it into the top half of the alphabet range, but time has come to face the facts. Bucky – the Winter Soldier – is not going to be found easily. And that means one of two things: either finding him is no longer an option, which is a possibility Steve is not willing to consider, or, he is choosing not to be found. Which, on one hand, thanks, Buck, but on the other, of all the things Steve would have bet on his Bucky doing, this is item number one.

Save Steve, then run and hide.

Because he did save Steve, that is beyond question. Sam might whine about unreliability of witness testimony, of Potomac water being hallucinogenic, of concussions, blood-loss, gunshot wounds and sun in his eyes, but facts are facts. Of course, Sam would then point out that Steve doesn't actually give a damn about facts, once he makes up his mind. He'd be wrong, Steve cares very much about the facts. It's when the facts stop adding up to the truth that he gets testy, because facts come and shift, and they shine light on some things and obfuscate others, but the truth, the truth is a constant. The truth is irrefutable.

Steve believed in truth, and the truth was this: Steve fell hundreds of feet from an exploding helicarrier. He'd been badly wounded, the impact stunned him, and he had been unable to reach the shore on his own. He got there, somehow, and got there early enough not to drown, ergo he must have been found in the water immediately after falling. The explosions were spectacular, so Steve would have bet on hundreds of watchers, but it wasn't like he was falling in a pristine vacuum; no, he was surrounded by steel and glass, and finding one man in the wreckage, well. That's what cadaver dogs are for. No one was going to risk running into muddy water in the middle of a slow explosion and torrential rain of flaming debris.

No, the truth was that if he had been saved, and he very much was, then his savior was right there in the middle of the explosion.

Also, Steve regained consciousness twice during the ordeal: once to see the sun reflect off a metal hand deep in the murky waters, and for the second time to watch a dark figure amble away from him, also shining suspiciously on the left. So he also had witness testimony.

It could only have been Bucky.

"Whatever you say, man," Sam said when Steve pointed it out for the seventh time. "I'm just saying, sometimes people do things."

"Yeah. Sometimes people reflexively save other people, risking their own lives in the process, when not saving them is in their best interest! Sometimes—"

"Steve, I'm so happy for you right now, and I'm gonna let you finish, but lemme tell you: I am not having this discussion again."

"Sam…"

"No. Look, I'm with you, okay? You were right, I was wrong, he's the kind you save. Congratulations. I promise I will do what I can to help you with this. But you gotta be sensible about this. This," Sam held up the file, "says he's literally had his brain pureed, over and over again. It's been what, four, five months now? If his healing is anything like yours, he's been fully functional for at least three. We found no evidence of a crazed master assassin on the loose. Which means he's gone to ground—"

"—or he's been caught."

"—or he's been caught. Which, and we had that discussion multiple times as well, is not something we can do anything about right now, not without leads."

"It's unlikely he's been—"

"If he returned to Hydra we will see him soon enough. If he hasn't, Hydra has bigger problems." Sam sighed. "Steve. I'm really fucking tired of playing Devil's Advocate here. There's no way out of this. We can't find him right now. This is the cold hard truth. We had zero leads, and zero leads in almost half a year means he is well enough to cover his tracks, or someone is doing it for him. We won't find him right now. Not on our own. You need to accept this, and not just trick me into arguing it every time you feel the urge to hire a sniffer dog."

Those are also facts, there's no disputing that. Problem is, Steve is not fully convinced they contribute to the truth all that much. Steve knows with every fiber of his being that if Bucky chose to save him, then Bucky has come back from the dead. He may still be in the process of digging himself out of his grave, and Steve is absolutely willing to get down into the hole and help with the shoveling. Steve owes Bucky this.

He tells Sam as much, and immediately he can see Sam slipping into his counsellor persona. "Steve… God knows I understand, but you gotta look really carefully at that attitude. Debts and obligations do not work that way. The whole life-debt thing, that's probably bad in the long-term, keeping tally."

"No, Sam. You don't understand," Steve says, wearily. "You don't get it, and Natasha doesn't get it, and Clint, none of you get it." Hell, Steve barely understands it. But this is not something he needs to understand. He doesn't understand what the mitochondria do, but that's not stopping him from continuing to breathe. "I need to do this. This is not me tallying up who saved whom and how many times, or gratitude, or paying anything back. I could: God knows, I racked up a life-debt with that man like you wouldn't believe, if I were to keep tally, but I'm not. I'm not." He takes a deep breath, makes himself feel his chest expand and imagines calmness pouring in.

"It's not even me trying to do the right thing. I gotta do this, but it's not _for_ him. It's because I won't be able to live with myself if I don't," he says, and he knows that Sam misunderstands even as he says it, ascribes it to some moral high-ground Steve really can't claim. Because he will have been standing on that hill, no matter what, he will have climbed it just to show Bucky he can, and he will. And that's the goddamned truth.

He will help Bucky.

Steve feels whole, for the first time in a long while. He's no longer adrift. Leaving Bucky alone is no more an option than lying down on the sidewalk and dying.

But Sam… Sam has a point. Bucky run and hid – because Steve refuses to consider alternatives – and Steve will need help if he's to find him again. Which is a conundrum in itself: how does he ask for the kind of help he needs? Natasha is still in the wind, on a vision quest as Sam once called it, what little Steve let himself contemplate of the entire SHIELD fiasco indicates bringing it up with Stark would be inadvisable, and here they are, half a year later.

So Steve visits the Smithsonian instead, and for a while he doesn't even mind. His guilt is weighing him down, because… because he should have looked for Bucky's body. He left a soldier, one of his own, fallen behind enemy lines. It doesn't matter now that there were miles and miles of a mountain river to traverse. He left a fellow soldier behind, which would have been bad enough, but no, it was worse, because it wasn't just a fellow soldier: he left Bucky behind. And it felt wrong, knowing that before. It felt wrong when he was sitting in the small church, staring up at Christ on the cross and begging for a sign that there was a heaven and Bucky was safe there, when he thought Bucky was dead and in the care of the higher power. He believed that, when he could believe nothing else: that Christ would welcome Bucky to heaven with open arms, that Christ would understand that the blood on his hands was the choice of a good man who wouldn't see evil prevail.

Steve was not the most pious of children, and war didn't inspire a believer in him, but every now and then he would pray for the peace for Bucky's soul, and that was almost, almost enough to keep the darker regrets at bay. He should have caught his hand. He should have caught the goddamned railing. He should have packed him up and sent him home the first chance he got, away from the war and death. Bucky had earned it. But he chose to stay with Steve, for Steve, and that, although he would never tell Sam, also made Steve responsible.

And now that it turned out that not only was Bucky not ensconced in the welcoming embrace of angels, but tormented by monsters, well, now Steve was inventing new ways of hating himself.

So yeah, it's not like standing in front of this flattering picture of Bucky is cathartic in any way – Dr. Bhagat has long since abandoned him as a hopeless cause, and Sam refuses to pick up the slack – it's more of an exercise in self-flagellation. Which is a novel idea. Relatively novel.

Seventy years in the ice so not count.

Perhaps it's the novelty that results in him falling asleep at the exhibit. He wasn't planning on it, or anything, but it turns out that if you read something enough times, reading it again is not reading, and you end up spacing out entirely.

He knows he is dreaming, and not even because he sees Bucky in his blue coat grinning at him, although that is an important clue.

He should probably talk to someone about this.

The lighting scheme of the exhibit casts strange, otherworldly sheen onto Bucky's face, and the displays. They seem more vivid during normal visiting hours, now they are just immobile and eerie. Steve stares, and Bucky smiles at him a little bit, then all of sudden they are walking, and as they walk he accidentally reaches too far and brushes Bucky's hand with his he finds it ice-cold. Steve snatches his hand back and cradles it in his as the dream trembles around him, suddenly less real than it was just a moment before.

"Hey," Bucky says, his skin now pale as snow. In the dimness of the hall the shadows under his eyes are dark like bruises. "Hey."

The light flickers and Steve hears the shuffling of feet against marble, distant but echoing, as though coming through a tunnel.

They should hire better guards, Steve thinks when he startles awake and realizes the lights are off, the alarms are on, and he is still sitting in the convenient nook with a clear line of sight to Bucky's memorial display, the shuffling steps still far enough away that he can slip through the exhibit, bundle his dogtags into a piece of paper, an address scribbled in a code Bucky will either remember or decipher. He takes care to lift the display just high enough to get it stuck underneath, where it would be undetectable by museum staff during cleaning.

Everything is a test, Steve tells himself. Bucky is in trouble. He will be looking for answers, and if there is a chance his memory will spark, maybe it will be this; maybe it will be that time the teachers made them stop speaking to one another for a week, because of the fighting, and they left notes underneath paintings at school. Steve slowly lowers the corner of the exhibit and runs his fingers over the sides.

"Bucky," he says to the picture above, a prayer if he's ever uttered one. "If you come here, please remember just this one thing: Mrs. McEnroe's class, and the detention in 1929."

Then it's into a bathroom and out the narrow window in the corner. He finds himself resenting the brightness of the lamplights on the street, the faint glow of the city which blocks out the stars. It's easier to hate himself in the darkness and silence, where there's no chatter to remind him that the world is probably better off for his losses and failures. In the half-light and hum of a city waking up for the day Steve has a much harder time letting his brain run wild and relive Bucky's fall again.

# Upstate New York

Wanda breathes heavily through her nose but doesn't give an inch. Her fingertips flash through the air, a black-tipped blur misted with red, and the air around her shimmers, blocking the tennis balls Steve throws her way. "Good!" he calls. "Are you ready for knives?"

"Ready!" she calls back, and Steve hurls a knife, a slim, delicate-looking thing Natasha procured a while back. It pauses in the air, a good yard away from her face, and joins the collection of objects orbiting her head.

Steve throws another, and another, and when he's out of knives he throws a shuriken. He's not great at it yet – Natasha sends them spinning and spiraling, so that even he has trouble dodging, even when he hears it coming by the whoosh of air. He's, in comparison, barely competent. Still, he does well enough and so does Wanda: the stars are intercepted and begin a leisurely trek along a reddish sphere at the center of which Wanda is dripping sweat.

"It's enough for today," Steve says. "You've done great."

She beams. Her control relaxes and the weapons drop to the mats.

"None of that. Everything back to the shelves."

Wanda throws him a look, but the knives and the stars tremble and take flight, moving along a meandering path back to their resting spots, in an almost exactly the same configuration as they were this morning.

"Tomorrow we're going to work on honing your observation skills." Steve walks to the shelf and rearranges the shuriken into a row. "I hope Natasha will be back by then."

"She promised to be back this evening," Wanda says as she picks up a towel. She mops the sweat off her face and neck, spreading the track of eyeliner trailing down her cheek. "We spoke just before she left. She promised to bring ice-cream, if I do good in training."

"You've done good," Steve tells her. "You should be proud and there will be ice-cream."

Her smile is brittle, this time, but honest. "Can't seem to work up the humor for it."

"It's going to be fine."

"I miss him," she says quietly. "It's like a hurt in my body. All the time. Will that ever go away?"

"I wish I could tell you it will." Steve picks up a towel of his own and stares at it. Wanda speaks of Pietro occasionally, in half-words and missing syllables, in glances and half-turns which would once result in contact, but now encounter empty air. Steve knows the feeling. "But you probably know, don't you?"

"I sense your loss." She bites her lip. "I read some of the file. On… on your friend."

Steve freezes.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"No, don't be. It's probably for the best that you know."

"He didn't," she starts with difficulty, "he didn't volunteer. Not like me and Pietro."

Steve shakes his head, trying to banish the memory of Bucky on the table from his mind, the images from old photos of what came after, bites back the hideous thought that sparks when he looks at her. "No."

"But in the end he saved you."

"Sam tells me I have no concrete proof, that I might have imagined it. That's okay though, I know he's only saying this so I don't get my hopes up too much."

The answer bothers Wanda, and Steve can't figure it out until she speaks again: "You have forgiven him for hurting you."

"I don't think I did. I don't think I ever blamed him in the first place, not when he was so obviously lost, and after I read the file… I don't think it's possible to forgive someone you think has done nothing wrong." Steve takes a breath and god, it feels good to say this. "I don't know what really happened when they found him, I don't know what was done. But I know that even if he broke, they couldn't make him comply. That wasn't a man who complied. He had no idea what I was, he didn't know who _he_ was. That's not compliance."

"Not like I did."

Steve takes a deep breath, lets it out through his nose. "No. Not like you did."

"You think I did the wrong thing, volunteering?"

Steve closes his eyes. "I understand why you did it. I do," he repeats when she huffs out a breath in denial. "I did the same thing. Well. I was luckier in my choice of German scientists, perhaps."

"They told us they were SHIELD."

"When did you know they weren't?"

Wanda ducks her head and trembles. "Would you be able to forgive him if he'd joined on purpose?"

Steve doesn't meet her eyes when he quietly says "yes". He would forgive Bucky everything, instantly, if he would only come back. That's not good for his mental health, apparently, according to Sam, but very little is.

Wanda falls silent and fiddles with the hem of her shirt. "Do you think Dr. Banner will ever forgive me?"

"I'm sure he will," Steve says, encouragingly, though he's not sure how honest he's being. He'd forgive Bucky, but Bucky and him, they are a set. He can't not forgive Bucky and keep living. And Wanda… She's trying. Lord knows she's fucked up big, but Bruce knows all about guilt and doing damage. He'll come around.

Probably.

Wanda must be listening to his thoughts, because she snorts quietly. "I think it's different. I saw, in his head—"

"No. Wanda… I understand you can't help hearing things, and that's fine, I—I trust you, but you can't tell people what you saw in others' heads. It's not right."

Steve regrets his words for just a moment, when her eyes widen in horror and then fill with tears. "You… trust me?"

"We're a team now," he says. "I will trust you, until you give me a reason not to."

"I never tell them I can hear," Wanda says. She sits down on the floor, knees close to her chest, her face hidden by hair escaping from the ponytail. "They did tests. I moved things. I made them fly, and hit and break, but I never said about the things I saw in their heads."

Steve is hoping she is not looking, because the only thing he can think of is how underprepared he is for this conversation.

"Why not?"

Wanda smiles, humorlessly. "I was scared. You asked how I knew they weren't SHIELD, that was how. They would run tests and they would hurt, and when we started changing, they would be scared, and there would be guards. I heard them think, this is not worth it. This is dangerous. We risk too much."

"They would have killed you."

"The hearing came first. I would wake with my head full. Swimming." Wanda raises her hands and moves them through the air, and the red sparks form waves in the air. "I felt like this. Like I was on water and I see fishes. Thoughts.

"Pietro could run then. Would snatch files from their hands too fast for them to react, and they were afraid, they saw him and they were so afraid, but relieved, because they could control him even when he ran. So I said nothing, even when the others died. We were the only ones."

"I understand that."

"Then I started seeing the red. And things started moving. And it was okay then. I knew they weren't good, but… I had power now. I didn't have to stay."

"Did… did they ever hurt you? Or Pietro?"

Wanda shook her head, dislodging more of her hair. "Never. Not like your friend. There were tests and some of them hurt, but they weren't trying to hurt us. We always thought we could leave."

Steve nods.

Wanda folds her fingers together and stares at them. "Do you think he'll come back to you?"

"I don't know."

"But you hope."

Steve smiles, though there's no way the smile is anything but sad. It's been a year and a half now. "I hope."

"It's better," she says and when he looks at her she adds, "I can feel the hope in you. It's bright. When you think of him, there's a lot of black, but there's hope, too. It's keeping the black at bay."

"And it's better?"

"Better than the dark."

Wanda keeps biting her lip and Steve waits patiently. He's no psychic, but the need to ask radiates from her, although when she finally does, he is not prepared.

"When you thought he died… did you feel it? There's a hole in you that feels familiar, feel like…"

"…like someone ripped my heart out." Yes, Steve knows how that feels to be hollow inside. "But no, I didn't feel it. Not like you." For the first time in a long while Steve calls on those memories, and they come, made all the more vivid for the recent reminder. "I didn't watch him fall. The railing broke and he fell, but I turned away." Steve's breath catches on the memory of Bucky's fall, at the single image of absolute fear on his face that couldn't have taken more than a second to register. "The train was moving too fast for me to see him hit the ground, and even if it didn't, I couldn't. I couldn't watch him die. I just… I never stopped seeing him reach out for my hand since."

"Pietro never stops calling for me in my dreams," Wanda says quietly. "Sometimes I think I see him standing in the corner of my room, and he's smiling at me, but then I remember he's gone, and I watch him die, again. Even though I didn't see him die." She brings a nail to her lips, worried at a peeling fleck of polish. "It feels so real, like it's a dream, like everything is real in the dream, even though I'm awake."

Steve forces down a flash of panic, reaches out carefully to touch her shoulder. "This is not something which will ever go away," he says. "I wish it did."

"You don't." Wanda lists her head, and though her tone is bitter, her lips and eyes are smiling. "You hope. You glow with it. You think it's small, but it lights everything up, inside, even the dark."

"I know he may never come back. I don't even know if I want him to."

"That's true, too. But you know he is alive, somewhere, and you know he saved you. You know. So it's not that bad. Because you know." She reaches out and touches his cheek. "Let it bloom."

"What if I am wrong though? Won't it be worse, if I let myself believe I'll have him back, but I can't save him?"

"That hope makes you strong. Makes you change the world."

Wanda smiles at him in earnest and Steve closes his eyes. "Thank you," he says. "But don't sell yourself short. You're here, same as me."

"Yes." Wanda braces herself. "Because I was wrong, I did wrong, and I must do right now, for me and Pietro, and I will."

"Do you think it will stop him coming to you at night?"

"No," she answers immediately. "And I'm not sure I want him to stop. It'd mean I'd have forgotten."

"But it will help."

"It will help," she nods decisively.

She goes and Steve is left staring at the wall. Maybe that was it. Maybe he needed to accept that there was nothing he could do for Bucky now, that when he was ready

In the meantime, perhaps it would be prudent to avoid the museum for a while. He had enough on his plate. Steve grabbed a punching back from the equipment room, hung it from a chain and proceeded to pummel it mercilessly for the next two hours, until he no longer felt the touch of ice on his face and the roar of a freight care against his side.

# Atlantic Ocean

What is success, Steve wonders. A mission whose objective was achieved? He has plenty of those under his belt. He considers many of them failures. This time he freed his friends from the Raft cells well within the planned parameters, and as he approaches the submarine bay, Wanda tucked under his arm, Sam at the other, he finds Natasha waiting, guarding a pile of unconscious bodies and a submarine.

"We still friends?" she asks Clint, inclining her head.

"You didn't hit me that hard," he says and strolls past her into the sub, brushing her shoulder as he goes. Steve motions for Scott and Sam to board, then follows, with Wanda hanging off his arm, and together they depart in silence. Seven decoys depart along with them, in all directions.

"So," Sam begins, when they exit the immediate attack zone. "How did it go?"

"Badly."

"How many supersoldiers do we have to worry about?"

"Just the one."

"The one being you, or the one being Barnes?"

"Bucky is safe."

"Right," Sam says. "Safe as in no one else knows where he is, or safe as in definitely dead and free of this vale of tears?"

"Harsh, dude." Scott is staring at Sam in abject horror. "Way harsh."

"Judge all you want, Steve's got his grieving face on."

"He went into cryo until we can find a way to deprogram him. He felt it'd be better for everyone." If he's bitter about it, he hopes it isn't obvious.

"It's a sound call, Steve," Natasha says before Sam can open his mouth, likely to confirm that yes, the bitterness is obvious and apparent. "The only reason we aren't dead is because he wasn't trying to kill us at the time. If he's in cryo, we have time to figure out how to deprogram him."

"Dude is dangerous."

"Thank you for stating the obvious, Sam."

"He seemed alright to me," Scott says with a shrug.

"Call me after he rips off important bits of your ant-uniform, okay?"

"Was he okay though?" Clint asks, looks at Natasha then at Steve. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding," Clint says, pointing at the back of his hand.

"It's nothing, don't worry about it." It was a shallow slash, Steve barely felt it at the time, and it was already scabbing over.

"Can we go back to the Winter Soldier unit? I really wanna know what we're getting into here." Sam prods the bruise on his cheek and winces. "How bad is it?"

"Zemo killed all five before we even got there. He wanted revenge for Sokovia." Steve stares at his shoes, and before follow-up questions can be asked he continues, "Bucky was the one who killed Tony's parents. Zemo was after a recording from a security camera this whole time, not the soldiers. He showed the video to Tony. Tony tried to kill Bucky. Blew off his arm."

Sam says nothing for a long while, studying Steve, and then he asks, voice free of all inflection, "Is Tony still alive?"

"He's fine."

Steve pretends he doesn't hear Sam exhale in relief. "Man…"

"Don't."

Sam raises his hands, but there is no judgement in his eyes. Steve clings to that. It's all he has left. That and the certainty that, for better or worse, Bucky is safe for now.

"I'm guessing this means we have limited resources now?" Clint asks.

"We have nothing," Steve confirms. "Plus a fugitive status."

"So… what is the plan?" Scott asks, looking at Steve.

"Natasha knows of a couple safehouses we can use. We have some confidential information about Ross that should be hitting major media outlets right about now, which hopefully will buy us a little public favor and put him in enough hot water to leave us alone for some time. Won't be much and likely won't get us far."

"So we're going to ground?"

"Yes." Steve straightens. "We're going to the US first. You will have approximately twenty-four hours to say goodbye to your families, then we'll be moving on."

"It's a little risky, Steve," Sam says. "Not that I want to disappear without letting my ma know, but… I'm sure she'd understand."

He is right, of course. Still, they need to go to the US first, given that whatever resources they have left are there, and, given the institutional chaos, they should be able to get out easily right now. "You shouldn't have to. We'll be fine, just be careful. Natasha will take you through the protocols, and if you'd rather stay safe and wait, that's fine. I can relay a message."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Sam tells him then, eyes narrowed and fixed on his face, "but what exactly is your business stateside? You have no family there. Sharon and Peggy are both in Europe."

Steve briefly debates the merits of keeping mum, but the few times he actually tried not being honest things tended to bite him on the ass, so: "I left something for Bucky to find, way back when. A message. I don't want to leave it behind."

"Laura will kill me. She will kill me dead. If I don't show up to the rendezvous, know that I am dead and buried in the family plot," Clint tells them, hands curled up on his knees.

"I'm sorry. I never should have dragged you into this."

"Eh, well. You overestimate your patriotic powers, Cap."

You say that now, Steve thinks, but sooner or later it's going to hit you, and then you will hate me. And you should. Because this is my fault. I shouldn't have walked away from all of you, even for Peggy. I should have been there, in Vienna. I should have stopped all of it from happening. I should have known, from the moment we found Loki's scepter. I should have known and I should have done something about it.

And then, from somewhere deep, there rises another thought: I should be the one in cryo, not Bucky.

And one more time: I should be in cryo with Bucky.

It's not precisely that thought that eventually takes him back to the Smithsonian, but it is a part of it. Part of it is that he told Sam the exact truth: he did leave a message for Bucky in the Smithsonian, along with his original dogtags. He doesn't particularly want the message to be found, even if the content is just the address of the Avenger facility, but his dogtags have sentimental value. Also practical now, he reflects humorlessly. He had a new set, shining and made from titanium, which he had to ditch as they also contained a tracking chip.

What he didn't tell Sam was the other part, which is the visceral need to see Bucky again, in whatever form. He could have lived without the dogtags and the message was neither informative (the email and phone number were both coded, the phone he discarded, the address common enough knowledge) nor revealing. It's not enough to remember his peaceful face as the cryo-pod closes, locking him away, watching him walk away from Steve out of his own free fucking will.

Leave, you selfish asshole, why don't you. Leave me with this mess on my hands, with the world that doesn't want to be saved, with teammates who won't listen, with all those organizations that just won't stay dead.

No, he needs to see Bucky who is not out of his reach. So he goes. He sneaks into the museum after the elderly guard makes the round which should be the first of many, but he is old, and the halls long, so he will doze off in his cubicle.

Steve shimmies through the bathroom window and drops onto the floor without making a sound. The museum is eerie in the night, gleaming clean and full of memories which he hesitates to claim as his. He makes his way to the Captain America exhibit holding his breath. The exhaustion makes his movements sluggish; he brushes the freshly scabbed cut against the edge of the door, feels the sting travel up his arm. He must not be seen here, can't leave signs of his presence, but who is going to look for him in the Captain America exhibit at night? So Steve settles, shoulders wedged into his favorite niche, closes his eyes and breathes slowly through his nose. He is exhausted, but he has gone without sleep for longer, there's no telling when he'd be able to fall asleep, when his brain is still buzzing with the need to look over his shoulder all the time. The museum is deserted, and poorly guarded, and still there is a part of him that watches the shadows on the floor, waiting for them to solidify into a guard, into a SWAT team, into the police.

Instead, he sees a pair of very familiar shoes.

"You really screwed this up."

Steve sits up straight, eyes wide, face to face with… himself.

The other man, the other Steve, stares at him dispassionately.

"What—"

"You must be so satisfied," the other Steve continues. His hands hang loosely by his sides, brushing the side of the coarse pants, too high-waisted to have come from this century. "You stopped looking, and then you were surprised when he didn't come running back to you."

"What are you talking about?" Steve manages at long last, staring at the man in front of him, the vision of him, as he'd never been. Steve can't remember ever wearing civilian clothes after the serum. Nothing like this, certainly. Not the suspenders with stitches made by his mother, when the strap broke in late autumn, early in the morning, and she had no thread to spare other than yellow. "Where did you get those?"

"You could have found him at any time. You could have found him in time. But now he's gone, and if he has any sense at all, he will stay away from you."

Steve clenches his fists and takes a step forward. "Shut the hell up."

"Oh? You think he's going to come running? Two years you had to do something for him. Two years, all the money in the world, best computer people, best everything, and always, always you found something bigger to do, something more important." The other Steve twists his mouth and takes that final step forward, so they are standing nose-to-nose. "Why would he come back to you? Bucky is smart. He knows there's no future with you, nothing but the fight."

"He's my friend!"

"Oh, absolutely." The other Steve cocks his head and smiles, without humor, without kindness. "But are you his?"

Steve reels, as though struck. "I've always been his friend."

"That's why he'd rather go back to the ice than stay with you?"

"He's not safe—"

The other Steve's face doesn't twitch. "And whose fault is it, hm? You think Zemo would have used him, if he was under your protection?"

"I couldn't—"

"You left him totally alone, for two years! Two years! Anyone could have found him in that time!"

"I didn't want to put a target on his back!"

"He already had one! Your only job was to put a shield over it, and you fucked it up!"

This is a dream, Steve tells himself. You've talked to Sam. You've gone through the sessions. This is your own psyche conjuring every dark thought you ever had to spite you.

Then he thinks: at least it's not Bucky saying this, because I would break down.

"I had my team to think off."

"Yes. And you thought of them, too. Presumably that's why they can never go home again."

Steve closes his eyes and bites down on his lip. "I want to wake up." He wanted to see Bucky. He just wanted that one thing. The Bucky of old. He wanted to see his Bucky.

"You wish you were dreaming," the doppelganger says, and when he smiles it's all teeth.

When he strikes, it's all hurt.

Steve lands on his back, winded, and immediately rolls to the side, to avoid a kick to the face. He has no weapon on him, and even if he did, there's no guarantee it would work. He's fighting a man wearing his own face, for crying out loud. His face, his voice, his own clothes!

And yet Steve knows the man can't be real in any way. The clothes never fit, he remembers that much, but they wouldn't have fit seventeen-year-old Bucky, let alone Steve at twenty-four, past the medical experimentation and the Vita-rays. This is an illusion.

With, Steve has to admit, uncanny ability to mimic accents, speech, fighting patterns.  
Steve dodges a high kick and rolls, grabbing a shield from the display. It's light and unfamiliar, and predictably breaks after the first strike, but it's enough; Steve goes flying, slams into Bucky's stand, and topples it, landing ungracefully in the heap of glass. He smells the blood before he notices he's been cut, and so does his opponent, because he just stops.

That's when the alarms start blaring.

Steve discards the shield, spares a second to worry about fingerprints, decides it's probably not going to get him in more trouble, and runs, before the wheezing of the old guard starts echoing in the corridor. The tiny window in the bathroom would be a much better exit if his shoulders weren't that broad, but he manages to squeeze through just in time.

"I really shouldn't have come here," he says out loud. "Bad idea."

He gets himself to the rendezvous point, dodging awkward questions about the origin of the fresh cut on his hand. It burns when Sam pours disinfectant onto it, but doesn't impact his dexterity at all, so Steve puts it out of his mind.

"So did you get it?" Sam asks, and for a second Steve has no idea what he's even talking about. Then he remembers.

Fuck. He didn't get it.

"In my defense, I got attacked."

"This gonna be a problem for us?" Sam secures the gauze on the wound with tape and firmly wraps an unnecessary bandage around Steve's hand.

"It won't," Steve says confidently. "We'll be out of the country by tonight."

"And the huge puddle of Captain America's blood we're leaving behind in an undisclosed location won't be an issue, because it's a remote place no one has any real access to," Sam says dryly as he gathers the medical supplies back into the first-aid kit.

Steve winces. "Well, no. It's not remote. But it's unlikely anyone would be able to match my blood to anything."

"No shit?"

"I have highly classified experimental formula in me, and I worked at a cover government agency. My DNA samples are not on file."

"Right… And the thing that happened right now won't affect the formula thing?"

"They won't have collected enough to run tests on, especially since it will be old and dry."

"You may underestimate the state of forensics these days."

"I was an employee for two years. They must have taken a pint out for one reason or another. If they don't have it yet, I doubt they ever will."

There is the small matter of fingerprints, of course, which Steve is deliberately not bringing up, because in the grand scheme of things what can the fingerprints prove? That he was there? Well, he and half of Washington. The shield might be contentious, but really, Steve is not so sure they even have his fingerprints on record.

He hopes no one finds the dog tags.

"Did Clint make it back?" he asks, catching Wanda's eye over a dusty bus seat, while Sam packs the first-aid kit.

"Not yet, but we got a buzz from him. He's alive and well, and on his way."

"Laura was not happy," Natasha said, coming in from the dark and dropping into a seat opposite. "What happened to you?"

"Got into a fight."

"I'm starting to understand why Barnes thought it was a good plan to stay away," she says, and for the first time Steve's known her her voice is unyielding. Step up your game, Steve, she seems to be saying. Step up your game or I will.

Clint joins them not long after that, closely followed by Scott, and as one they turn to Steve. "What now, Cap?"

# Hurghada

They keep moving. Steve won't risk his truce with T'Challa, won't risk drawing attention to Wakanda at all, so they keep well out of the region altogether. Understandably, with the frequent hops between countries and continents, the occasional skirmish with remains of Hydra, Steve has little to think through the recent ordeals. He prefers it that way, sleeping at night is difficult enough.

"Rough night?" Wanda asks, when she finds him on a decrepit balcony of their current safe house.

"Too hot to sleep."

"Yeah. This is not my climate, at all."

They are in Egypt, presently. No shortage of European tourists along the Red Sea, even in the cheap hotels. No one pays attention to them. Sam and Scott learn how to kite-surf; Steve is glad of it. It looks like tremendous fun he can't bring himself to partake in. They are waiting for the final call regarding Scott's deal with the FBI: if all goes well he'll be boarding a plane to take him to the States within days. Clint is already back on the farm, with his kids. He checks in with Natasha, every now and then. Steve doesn't ask how, but he is a little jealous. Clint is probably not spending a fortune on sunscreen and air-conditioning.

"Can't you imagine you're somewhere colder?" Steve raises his hand, makes a vague motion in the whereabouts of his temples. "You said it works on you?"

Wanda's lip trembles.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it."

"No, it's… good. Thinking about it helps." She holds out her hands, looks at the moon through her fingers. "Vision was not wrong. I don't know my powers yet."

"But they do work on you?"

"To an extent."

"Go on then," Steve says.

"Go on?"

"Practice. Put us somewhere colder."

She recoils. "I don't—"

"Do it," Steve says gently. "You should learn, and this seems like a good place to start."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't want any snow. I wouldn't mind a little rain, however."

Wanda smiles. "I know just the place." Her fingers stretch, curl, glow, and suddenly the sands of Egypt fall away, and Steve is standing on a grassy hill. It's chilly, he's wearing a thick woolen sweater, just uneven enough to suggest it was hand-made, and a pair of jeans so old and worn they hardly feel like jeans at all. His boots are old, too, but maintained with care. Wanda stands at his side, similarly dressed. Her hair is held back with a colorful scarf, the ends of which trail down her back.

On her face there is open longing and heartbreak.

"This is Sokovia," Steve guesses. It looks nothing like Novigrad, the parts of it he glimpsed before it fell out of the sky.

"This is where we lived." She points to an apartment block half a mile away. It's unattractive, a slab of grey concrete against the grey sky. "We used to spend hours on these fields. Not that our home was bad, but it was cramped, so we stayed outside."

"Yeah, I know the feeling." The cramped feeling, at least. The block reminds Steve a little of Bucky's hiding place in Romania, of the decrepit yet cozy apartment. It wasn't a bad place; once the newspapers were removed from the windows, the walls painted, maybe, he could imagine staying there. Cooking in the kitchen with cabinets too low to work on comfortably. Moving the magnets on the fridge. Curling up on the old matters, and grumpily demanding that the light be turned off, because he is tired.

The landscape flickers, glows. Thick, oppressive heat swamps them, until it's dispersed by the wind. Steve breathes it in, and for a moment he sees a flash of green: a thick, lush greenery of unhindered jungle.

Wanda smiles, though it is strained. "Is this where it is?"

"It?"

"Your… heart."

"My… what?"

"Brains are weird. There's what you think about, and what you try not to think about, and there's a place that you go to, when you need help. I don't have easy access to all." Wanda waves her arms vaguely in the air. She wants to say something more, but doesn't, not until Steve nudges her. She looks down, at the lush grass and weird spiky plants. She frowns at it and suddenly it's no longer weird and spiky, but familiar. A raspberry bush. The frown on her face is growing more pronounced, as her fingers make their way to her mouth. She looks down, and her cheeks flame red. "I saw what you saw."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry."

He remembers, with disturbing clarity, the vision Wanda gave him, and he knows, as he knew when it happened, that his mind was being played with. He remembers the shadow of Peggy; beautiful, brilliant Peggy, reduced to her lipstick and heels and dress.

"I knew it wasn't real," he says. "Even then."

"Doesn't mean it didn't hurt."

"Oh, it hurt," he tells her wryly, and her flush darkens. "It could have been worse, though. If you'd shown me Bucky, I might have strangled you then and there."

Wanda's eyes grow round. "Really?"

Steve shakes his head but doesn't say anything. "So how does it work? Those visions? How did you know about Peggy?"

"I was taught about her. Hydra showed us movies, in the beginning. They showed us that there was a woman, and then you died. So when I saw you I looked for her."

"You got her wrong though." Steve smiles when she looks surprised. "You did. She looked perfect, I'll grant you that, but it wasn't Peggy."

"Oh."

"Tell me how you made me see the dance hall. You wanted to show me something I was afraid of?"

Wanda frowns. "It's not—Fear is not easy. I was looking for something you feared."

"I fear a lot of things. Why didn't I see a train?"

"Did you ever google something?" Wanda shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans and stares up at him. "You have to know what you are looking for. I knew about Peggy, I made you feel anxiety, and you gave me war and a dance hall. I just told your brain to put it together."

Steve stares off into the vague distance. Wanda has less experience with jungles than he, so her rendition is blurry along the edges, and a lot of the plants are rather cartoony, too bright, too flat. He's looking at a painting.

"Is this jungle in your head or mine?"

"A little bit of both." Wanda bites her nails again. "But I was trying to show you something of mine. I don't know why this happened."

"I'm hardly inventing. This looks like the view from T'Challa's palace. Maybe I've leftovers from the first time, I have very intense dreams sometimes. I figured your powers stick."

"No, they don't," Wanda says immediately. "I sometimes do things without meaning to, but it's always to my own head. Things fly off the shelves, maybe." She bends down to rub a blade of grass between her fingers. "I think if I really tried I would be able to make something permanent, in the head. But it would be tricky. It would show. A dream is easy, but anything more…" Her hands spread apart, come back together and out again, as she grows more agitated. "I don't know. I think it's be possible. But it's like fire. I light a candle, and you see shadows. But the candle ends, and so do the shadows. To make them stick I would have to—" she closes her fists and conjures a red shine to surround them.

"Light a fire," Steve finishes. "A fire has to be fed."

"It's not very exact."

"I'd be worried if it were."

Steve lets the thought drift through his head, until they coalesce into something concrete. "Is there a chance you could affect me from a distance? Say, twenty miles?"

"What?"

"Have you ever been to the Smithsonian?"

She looks at him, her eyes wide. "I haven't been. I wanted to, for a moment, in January, but I started feeling ill, so I didn't go in. Couldn't be in closed spaces for a time. I thought it was just, you know." She makes a vague gesture towards her underbelly, and Steve figures she means something menstruation related – he recalls several of the USO girls having days so bad they would sway on their feet right after the show. One time even during. "Steve? What's wrong?"

Steve is not prone to hallucinations. He is certain of it. Something else was going on there, something he has been foolishly willing to let go, because it didn't seem like a big enough issue, not when hallucinations were a likely enough explanation. But… hallucinations didn't fight. Steve rarely dreamt in this kind of detail, despite his eidetic memory.

"Steve?" Wanda asks again and the illusion dissipates around them, and the wave of dry air slams into them both with the force of a tide. "You're scaring me."

"You can manipulate matter and create illusions, and got your powers from the artefact, the one Loki had in his staff," he says slowly. "Thor called them Infinity Gems. He dealt with at least three, the Tesseract, the one Vision now has, and the Aether. But he said there are more. Six in total."

"Yes…?"

"The Tesseract was a potent power-source, Vision's gem allowed for mind-control in Loki's hands. And it gave you and your brother powers."

"Maybe." Wanda bites her lip and folds her hands. "They said… at least I think I remember them saying that there must have been something latent in us. Or it's something I felt."

"Wouldn't surprise me at all." Steve offers her a small smile. "I don't like to think about that, myself, but Bucky once said to me that all the magic in the world wouldn't help the poor schmuck they could have chosen instead of me to be Captain America." He closes his eyes and feels the steady gaze on his face, remembers the contours of Bucky's face, highlighted by a fire. It had been a bad mission, a failure by any reasonable standard, until the train redefined failure forever. Bucky had come with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, a dirty comic book under one arm and a small smile. "You gotta stop that, Steve," he said. "You ain't gonna win them all."

"I should have won this one."

"Yeah, pal, lemma tell you. The whole fucking shebang, whatever you let Stark pump you with, ain't magic, okay? You aren't some kind of superhero now. You're a little faster, a little stronger, but you're gonna fuck up and get beat-up, you know? Some other schmuck would have maybe counted to a hundred without taking off his shoes, but you're still the same dumbass kid throwing himself at assholes twice his size. You went and got your ass kicked more often than not, remember that? And the assholes are bigger now."

"I used to get beat-up a lot more."

"Well, that oughta make you think, then," Bucky said. "Maybe you oughta throw yourself at even bigger assholes, if you're not getting bet up."

"Are there any bigger assholes around?" Steve asked, and Bucky grinned at him.

"If anyone can find them, it's gonna be you, I have zero doubt about that. Bane of my fucking existence you are."

If only he had an inkling then how true that was, Steve thinks in despair. But he can beat himself up later, and ain't that the best fucking joke: he finally found an asshole big enough to give him a challenge.

Wanda looks at him worrying on her fingernail. Steve shakes his head. "What I'm trying to say is, no one else would have gotten your powers, but you got them because of the gem."

"I don't understand," she says, frowning. "You want more powers?"

But Steve is already thinking of the portal opening over New York City, about Clint firing at his own, even Ultron who carried a spark of the cosmic energy with it, and who levelled cities. "I think I know where we can find another stone."

Of course, when one is an internationally wanted fugitive getting things done on American soil is a little more complex that doing it, which was why Steve spends much of an early Thursday morning getting ready to make a phone call. The phone is not much to look at, really; it doesn't even have a touch screen. But there is a number programmed into it, just the one, and pressing dial will mean reaching a bridge Steve isn't sure he's ready to cross just yet.

He must, though. This is bigger than he is. Steve closes his eyes, takes the phone and presses dial.

"Yeah?" is Tony's first word, closely followed by, "You should know it's three a.m., so you better have a good reason to be calling."

"I'm sorry, I forgot about the time difference," Steve says, even though he knows Tony can't possibly be asleep. He can hear the comforting whirr of the laboratory in the background. "Hello, Tony."

"Cap," Tony says. Steve doesn't even try to read his inflection.

"I have news."

"What are they," Tony asks without bothering to inflect, again.

"I have information about an artefact that can make hallucinations real," he says carefully.

"And that would be?"

Steve hesitates. What are the chances this line has been hacked? What are the chances Ross has access to Tony's communications?

What are the chances Tony is cooperating?

"Will you meet with us?" he asks instead, staring straight ahead. It would have to be in Africa.

"Depends. Is your buddy," and there is no word in the English language to convey the absolute lack of any geographical features of his tone, "gonna be there?"

"No. He won't."

"You know where to find me, then."

"Tony—"

And that's that.

"I don't like this," Sam says later, when Steve fills him in. Wanda listens with her eyes wide open, fingers clenched in the seat of her chair.

"There is something in the Smithsonian. We should make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands."

Sam looks at Natasha and then at Steve. "Steve… and what on earth makes you think getting Stark involved would ensure that?"

"He means well," Steve says quietly.

"I'll believe that."

"We don't exactly have a wealth of options. Stark is in the States, he's got freedom of movement, he can easily swing by the Smithsonian."

"There is SHIELD."

"I don't trust SHIELD," Steve says immediately.

"Are you sure we can trust Stark?"

"No," Steve has to admit. "And I don't. But he understands the dangers. This is not something we can just hand over to anyone, this is way bigger than us."

"Last time he got his hands on one of those things a small European country went belly-up," Sam says. "It kind of dominated the news."

"He may be cooperating with Ross," Natasha says. "We have no guarantee there won't be a team waiting for us at the rendezvous spot."

"Tony wouldn't."

"He doesn't love Ross, that's true. But Steve, you underestimate just how much Tony has to lose. He can play dumb to an extent, but he's not untouchable."

"Tony's got the best security—"

"Oh Steve," she whispers, and now there is genuine pity in her eyes. "You think you know war, because you shot a few bullets, watched men die? Countries rise and fall over bank accounts, and I guarantee Ross could scrape enough to put even Stark under. It would cost him, sure, but you think he wouldn't be willing?"

"Tony weathered scandals before."

Natasha's eyes flash and for the first time Steve feels he sees her for what she truly is: danger, distilled into human form. Not because she is a master assassin, but because of what is in her head, because of the brilliant mind within; a mind that understand humanity like Steve's unable to. She looks at him, through him, and even though they are more or less the same age, in terms of years lived, she is so much older, so much wiser. It's no wonder that when she finally speaks even the wind outside goes quiet and listens.

"You are a child, Steve and your naivete, your idiotic belief that wars are fought fairly, that wins are fair will get us, and many more people killed. I backed you in Leipzig, because you were right at the time, you were right about Zemo, but this is not a battle you can win. This is not going to be solved with a rousing speech. It worked for SHIELD, but SHIELD was full of people like you, who did what they did for those same reasons.

"You think this is how politics work? What, because you managed to dismantle an agency which has been infiltrated by its own first enemy? SHIELD fell because it had to, because much like Hydra it put too much stock in its own superiority, because how it fell was built into how it was created. You think you will find that in the FBI, too? CIA? The government? The US army? They are arrogant and feel superior, but they are not like SHIELD, Steve. They are not a monolith with one all-knowing hierophant sitting on the high chair.

"Ross is not some deformed cult leader, he's a military bureaucrat tangled with two dozen others on his level. He is sitting on shelves of information, resources, which could bury Stark and everyone he ever had contact with. He knows of every charity, every donation. He can find emails, phone calls, witnesses to show dirty money was flowing. Stark build his position selling weapons, and we know for a fact that some of those weapons were sold to America's enemies. That means is that they have all they need to bury Stark, and then some. They can bury Pepper, too. They can take away everything Rhodey worked for. You think Tony will risk them for a cheap stunt?

"With Ultron, with Iron Man in the picture, how long do you think it would take Ross to get warrants to search the tower for illegal weapons? Because I can tell you exactly: the distance from his office to the seat of Supreme Court is five miles, so about an hour and a half, if he feels like strolling. That's something he can do, and I'm sure it's not something he will do lightly, but if he does it, he will find a ticking time bomb, and god knows what else Tony concocted after a nightmare.

"We have to assume Stark is cooperating with Ross," she continues into the silence, but her voice is softer now, kinder. "Stark has a heart, Steve. If they come to him and threaten to take down every good thing he ever did, and people he loves with it, what do you think he will do?"

Steve weathers her gaze, but he knows when he's beaten. Wanda looks between them, not saying anything, while Clint and Scott just nod.

"What would you suggest, then?"

"We need Thor," Natasha says. "You are right, if there is something which can distort reality in the Smithsonian, it absolutely cannot stay there. And as much as I hope Tony has learned his lesson about alien objects of power, he will be under too much scrutiny and he is not good at blending in. Thor has every advantage, including the ability to travel undetected."

"Do we know how to contact him?"

Natasha hesitates. "For that we may need Tony or Vision. Of the two of them, I would rather deal with Tony."

"Thor left that… thing at the base," Sam says then. "You know, the glowing thingamajig? Said it can be used to contact him. You didn't bring it with you, by any chance?"

"Regrettably, no."

"Alright then." Natasha stands, looks around the room. "Give me three days. I'll keep you posted. Pack your things; Sam and Wanda, you will stay put, but be ready to move everything at moment's notice."

Sam and Wanda both nod. Natasha looks at Steve one last time before she leaves the room, and jerks her head. He follows; he can't not.

"Steve," she says, a couple of floors down. "I'm sorry about the scene."

"Don't be."

"Things are not simple anymore, if they ever were."

"No."

"You were right to distrust the Accords," she presses. "But you were not right."

"I know."

"We made a lot of mistakes, Steve. You, me, Tony – everyone. Sokovia paid the most for it. You were right about the Accords, at the time, but they were inevitable, and we did nothing to prevent them from happening. You were arrogant. We were arrogant. We brought this on ourselves."

"I know," he whispers.

She steps closer, wraps her arms around him and squeezes. "But it's going to be okay. I believe that because of you. I believe in you."

Steve swallows and his eyes prickle. He squeezes back. "I believe in you too," he wants to whisper into her hair, but can't, the words won't come. He wills her to understand this, all the same, and he knows that she does.

# Mombasa

The meeting is in Mombasa, exactly one week later. Well, part of it is. Steve won't pretend he is not surprised when they enter the room Natasha has rented and finds both T'Challa and Tony Stark waiting for them, their images projected out of what can only be Wakandan technology. God only knows how she managed this, but Steve feels as though the gravity, which seemed so profoundly strong just moments before, loosened its hold so that he no longer needs to fight just to keep standing.

"Captain," T'Challa says, inclining his head. His face is troubled and jaw set.

"Your Majesty. Is everything in order?"

"Minor problems. Nothing we can't handle."

Steve opens his mouth, just so, but remembers all too soon why he cannot ask.

"So what's this about a magic rock?" Tony asks immediately. He's standing, unlike T'Challa, and he keeps looking down, at whatever's in front of him with open curiosity. He won't look Steve in the eye, which the technology makes more than possible, at which point Steve realizes he is woefully unprepared. He has the story ready, he was there, and it is not complicated, but to say it out loud might shake up its foundations. And he is not wrong.

"You had a bad trip," Tony says.

"It was real."

"Hallucinations. We've all had them at some point."

"That hallucination punched me through an exhibit."

"Well maybe some of your buddies killed their family members," Tony spits out and folds his hands, and if Steve didn't wake every morning crushed by the guilt of not having spoken to Tony sooner, he might have felt the sting slightly less. "Hallucinations have feelings, too."

Steve, despite Natasha's warning glare, bristles. "Leave him out of this."

"No, don't think I will."

"Can we maybe get to the matter at hand?" Natasha peeks out the window, letting in a blinding ray of sunshine. "What do you propose?"

"We need to contact Thor," Steve says. "We are not equipped to handle those things without him."

"Yes, let's call Thor. By all means! Let me whip up me interdimensional cell phone, everyone knows Thor is just a phone-call away! Let's see maybe we can find Bruce, see if he fancies a stroll down Broadway in full Hulk mode."

"He left us a device to contact him," Natasha says. "It's in the compound."

This shuts Tony up for a total of five seconds. "I didn't know that."

"He left it for when we come across something from another world, specifically."

"So why do you need me?"

"The device is still in the US, on your property. We can't exactly waltz in to claim it."

"I can write you a waiver."

"Sit down," Natasha says coldly, and the force of her voice brings him down. A chair materializes underneath the projection, one that Steve recognizes as something from the laboratory in the Tower. "This is not about you. This is a crisis. The longer that thing is on Earth the greater the chance someone or something will pick up on it, and we cannot afford another alien army crashing the party. We need to get it off-world, as soon as possible."

Tony draws breath but then quiets. "Sure. I can have it FedExed to you overnight. My expense."

"Thank you," Steve says, but Tony only shrugs in response.

"Got any other bombshells hiding under those pecs?"

"What is your plan?" T'Challa asks meanwhile, looking at Steve.

"We will contact Thor, see if he can offer intel."

"And he will come?"

"I believe so. He said it's best not to expose a world without magic to too many magical artefacts."

T'Challa nods. "What if he cannot come?"

"The we will have to go ourselves."

"This will be dangerous. If this artefact was there for several years, then it might still be there, undisturbed. If it were to be removed, its absence might be noted immediately."

"Maybe." Steve catches Natasha's eye and then looks back to T'Challa. "But we know that whatever it is, it can interact with the physical world, and that it can be triggered by someone spending time at the exhibit."

"If it was dangerous, then we'd have seen something happen already," Tony counters, fingers flashing over his phone. "People getting superpowers. Exhibits walking. The full night at the museum package. I monitor the web for weirdness like that, and there was nothing centered around DC. Hell, I have been to Smithsonian. There was nothing there. Almost nothing, but no one's paying attention to proper dusting these days."

"It could be slow-acting."

"We don't know enough about those things to tell for sure," Tony says, but his eyes are glimmering now, and Steve starts wondering if maybe he made a mistake calling him in without a firm plan beyond "deliver something to me".

"Thank you for your time, then," Steve says, and turns to Natasha. "Is there anyone else we can call?"

"Now wait—"

"No. Goodbye, Tony."

"That was ill-advised," Natasha says when Steve disables the communicator and they are alone in the room.

"If you want me to beg him, you will be waiting for a long time."

"I don't want to see you beg. And I am worried, just like you. But if you want to keep making everything your problem, you have to learn how to make it not be about _you_ , first." Natasha gathers the small sculpture containing the communication technology, disassembles it into a string of beads and loops them around her neck. She leaves without another word.

It doesn't surprise Steve to learn that Natasha got into contact with Tony again, and that they should stay put and wait by the communicator device. This leaves them with the opportunity to explore Mombasa over the next few days, opportunity that Steve mainly leaves to others. Natasha visits him occasionally with what she insists are not reports but stories, but the end result is that he has a working knowledge of the city's layout and architecture, and the defensive capabilities of its police force.

"It's not going to be easy to avoid casualties, if the fight comes to us here," is Natasha final verdict.

"It won't come to that." Steve stretches on the narrow bed and closes his eyes. The air smells of dampness. Salty dampness with an undertone of fish.

"How are you doing?" she asks.

"Acceptably."

"And the fact that the problems in Wakanda coincides with Barnes' presence there lets you sleep at night just fine."

"Natasha…"

"You have to have wondered."

"Of course I wondered."

"And?"

"T'Challa would have told me."

"Good to know your standing with the Wakandans is that good."

"It's good enough."

Natasha shakes her head. "Come on. Go explore."

"Explore," Steve parrots. "Right now?"

"Until we know what or who we are dealing with, there's little we can do and you can't spend this time locked in your room."

"Maybe it's safer this way."

"It is much safer this why, so I hope it won't occur to you to find some crime to fight. But it is also bad for you."

Well, truth hurts.

"I can't do nothing."

"You are not doing nothing, Steve. You are gathering strength and getting ready for battle. This is not nothing."

"Sure feels like it."

Natasha stares at him for a long while, and Steve shifts under her gaze. "Go find Wanda. Spend time with her."

Steve tries to tell himself he is doing so under his own free will, that Natasha's words were a suggestion, not a command, but it's in vain. He gathers himself after she leaves, takes a shower and makes his way to the hotel Wanda's staying at.

"Are you okay?" Steve asks when she opens the door, reaches out to hold her hand. He almost lets go in shock when her knees buckle.

"I'm fine," she says, then curses under her breath. "Sorry."

"Did—"

"It's fine." She stands up straighter and takes a deeper breath. "Really. It's hard to…" her hands make shapes in the air, framing something Steve is sure wouldn't be possible to build in three dimensions. "I've never done things like this before. It's different."

"What is different?"

"I was trying to find the thing you were talking about."

"In the States?"

Wanda grimaces. "I thought I can try. But I can't. I can sort of--" she waves her hands again in a gliding motion, "Across minds, but the ocean is too big."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Something hot and sweet. Chocolate helps, usually."

"Sure."

Steve helps her back into the room and makes sure she is sitting before he ventures out of the room in search of something hot and sweet. He finds a bar on the ground floor and waits as the bartender grudgingly fills two cups with chocolate and no alcohol.

Wanda drinks hers in small sips, curled up in an enormous armchair with a view of half the city and the ocean beyond. "It is better," she answers the question Steve didn't yet voice, with a small nod.

"You shouldn't have done that."

Wanda sinks further into the armchair, and her fair falls forward to shadow her face. "You would."

"Doesn't mean it would have been a good plan."

Wanda gives him a look he can't decipher. There's a touch of pity in it though, and he's not ready to see that. "What do you want, Steve?"

Steve looks away. Outside, the ocean is glittering in the sun, giving all the buildings between it and him a radiant halo. He thinks he remembers Bucky reading him something to that effect, but for the life of him he cannot remember what it was.

He cannot remember what Bucky read to him, he thinks, and a brief panic seizes at his innards. That's can't be right. Can't be.

"Are you okay?" Wanda asks gently, startling him.

"Of course."

"It's just…" she seems lost for words, gesturing with her free hand.

"It's just?"

"I don't know. I felt something, just now."

"Does that surprise you?"

"No." Wanda moves from the chair she's sitting on to the settee, where she can rest her cheek against Steve's shoulder. "You seemed sad when I first met you. It was everywhere in your thoughts. It didn't go away, but now you are more lost than sad."

Steve doesn't tell her he hasn't felt like he was anywhere ever since before her grandparents first met, and nothing that happened over the past two years gave him relief.

"Do you want to be here?" she asks, tired of the silence, no doubt, and he smiles.

"In Kenya?" he asks, and as stalling techniques go, it is not the greatest. Wanda lifts her head from his shoulder and stares at him. She's not listening to what's in his mind, Steve is sure; he's gotten good at recognizing the touch of her powers, even when it's faint. But she is looking at him, looking into him it seems, and the effect of her unfocussed gaze is unsettling.

"I think you know what you need," she says eventually, wide-eyed an unsure as she often is, but her fingers twitch. He wonders if she can see the exact shape of the hole in his mind.

Steve would laugh, if laughing didn't carry with it the threat of sobbing. "I know," he whispers. He tried to fill the hole before, with his work, with Sam, with Natasha, but all that happened was he created more holes and filled those, leaving the big one at the core empty, and building around it. Maybe, if he'd had the time, it would have healed. Sam certainly helped, would have helped, Steve could tell, and so did Natasha. But they haven't known each other that long until the raw wound, just barely healed around the edges, was torn open anew, this time worse, with broken glass and poison, ensuring it would never close again.

Steve isn't a picture of mental health. He doesn't need Natasha to tell him that. It's probably a good thing no one seriously made him talk to a professional; it couldn't be healthy, but then again was there a healthy way to take a revelation of the sort? Was there? Steve doubted that. He preferred to handle things his way, anyway, and what would the professional tell him, anyway? That he was unfit to do the one thing he was good at? That he was digging himself in deeper with every day he was dedicating to finding battles to fight?

Wanda shakes her head, but as she does her jaw drops in an impressive yawn, and she curls up in the chair, ready to nod off at any minute. "Get to bed," Steve tells her gently, shakes her shoulder until she, grumbling all the way, complies. He stays until he can be sure she is sleeping, then sets a few basic security measures, hangs the "do not disturb" sign on the door and leaves.

He walks out into the night. It simultaneously more and less alien than he would have expected. The faces he encounters are similar to the people he met in Wakanda, not surprising, considering how close they are. Steve stops at a crossroads and breathes, shoulder pressed against a coarse wall. Breathe. Breathe. He sinks to his knees, counts the cobbles in front of his eyes and breathes, breathes. In and out. He is out of time.

Oh god, he is out of time.

He isn't cold though. It's not the same. There's no icy water rushing to meet his face, no wave of cold stealing into his mouth, stealing breath, choking him.

There is light on the street, with no explicit source; a faint mist of it permeates the whole city. It is golden and warm, and so is ice in the waking sunlight. So is ice when the water takes away the ability to feel cold, leaving behind only this: this pure, pale gold radiance, which steals into the lungs and the heart and the brain, takes away the bitterness of brine and grease, and the harshness of ice.

Steve lies on the sidewalk, like he lay on the walkway to the cockpit, and stares at the stars above, unable to move, unable to breathe.

He comes to – thinks he comes to – not that long after, when a faint noise of door slamming is very distinctly wood against wood, not metal. He is not in the plane; he is in Mombasa. He is not on the plane, he is not in the ice. He is in Kenya. Time is not flowing beyond him, out of his reach; he is submersed in it, and it might be slipping through his fingers, as god only knows what travels with it, but he is there, still there.

It's still night; the sky above him is full of foreign stars, dimmed by the city light. It's beautiful, he thinks, and relaxes his shoulders into the cobbles. It's empty. Yes, there are stars and colors, but that's not what he's looking at, not really, is it. There is the vastness of space calling out to him in the beyond, littered with stars and hundreds of billions of miles of nothing in-between. The atmosphere feels thin, like there is nothing whatsoever separating him from the sky; the abyss seems so much closer now, reaching for the cobbles like Steve's bulk is insubstantial. If he reached out he could close his hand around one of the stars, take it right out of the sky.

What must it be like to live where the sky is within reach?

A faint clap of flip-flops echoes between buildings. Steve collects himself from the ground, still and a little bit cold, and looks up. Immediately before his eyes there is a brick wall, a pale sandy color smooth like marble, with veins of rich yellow throughout. Except… it's not so much rich yellow, it's veins of light. Steve looks around, at the buildings nearby and the street underneath his feet. There are similar veins wherever he looks, lighting up the streets from every side, even in the night.

Far on the horizon the sky is turning a pale orange, even though right above it's still full of stars. Steve stares ahead, as the person he heard just moments ago passes him, absorbed in the device in their hands.

He makes his way to the hotel drunk on the proximity to the abyss.

The morning comes in the form of Natasha and Wanda barging into his room, the Wakandan device already assembled.

"I asked around," Tony says without preamble, when the particles assemble to create the illusion he is standing in the middle of the room. "There's a guy called Doctor Strange in New York. He can be persuaded to have a look."

"Doctor Strange?"

"He does magic," Tony says with obvious distaste for the word. "Seemed like a man for the job."

"Can he be trusted?" Natasha asks, and Tony rolls his eyes.

"Can anybody?"

Steve breathes, while the world spins.

"I need to go." Steve pretends he doesn't see the open concern on Natasha's and Wanda's faces, nor the sudden suspicion on Tony's. "I'll call you."

He has the phone in his pocket. He always has the phone in his pocket. The battery is dead, but there must be a shop here that sells chargers. Steve jogs down a narrow street, against the crowds, into what he hopes is a city center. He's in luck; not ten minutes later he comes across a bodega with a selection of cables on display. Steve picks one, reaches into his pocket and to find a few bills of Kenyan shillings, thank god.

The charger feels flimsy in his hands, but doesn't fall apart as soon as he plugs it into a socket in a coffeehouse. Steve orders a coffee when a waitress looks his way and goes back to staring at the dark screen of his phone. Steve waits, drumming his fingers against the table, until the battery icon is stops flashing and the phone deigns to switch on.

"Fucking finally," he mutters to himself and punches in the number T'Challa has given him to memorize, in case of emergency. Shuri offered, they both offered him a different device, one not reliant on power, but he declined: no Wakandan tech, nothing that would lead those who would apprehend him to Wakanda. Instead he has this: an old phone, a used charger, and a flickering battery.

There's a tone, then another, and another, and finally a voice.

"Captain," T'Challa says, among the static.

"You Highness," Steve begins, and falters. "I—I need to ask permission to visit. Please."

"Of course. A transport will be waiting for you at the coordinates," T'Challa responds immediately. "The Border Tribe will be informed of your arrival. Have a safe trip."

The connection ends, and a moment later the screen of the phone lights up with a string of numbers. Steve is already in motion, running down a checklist in his head. The hotel, pack the few things he has. Find transport. He's going to need something sturdy, the roads leading towards Wakanda are not great. It's probably best if he doesn't steal it.

He leaves a note for Natasha to find before he goes.

# Wakanda

The beads tangle on the string, and Steve curses to himself as he lays them out on the ground in the middle of the hut. He steps back, as Tony materializes in the half-light.

"What's with the man-cave?"

"Trying out a new look," Steve says. Tony cracks a smile, and though he immediately, visibly regrets it, Steve cannot unsee it.

"Goes well with the caveman 'do."

Steve rolls his eyes, though he, too, felt the tartan sash was a bit much. He's come around since he was presented with the clothes, but after years of wearing nothing but tight-fitting uniforms, they will feel a little too loose for a while.

"I got in touch with Doctor Strange," Tony says. "He was persuaded to take a trip to Washington, and apparently you weren't completely off your rocker."

"Did he find it?"

Tony makes a vague gesture in the air and another man steps into the being in the low light of the hut. He's wearing a cape with a high collar, but if it weren't for that, and a foot of height, he and Tony could be twins.

Maybe it's even because of that. Steve is not about to bet capes are beyond Tony.

"Good evening, Captain."

"Doctor."

"I examined the artifact," Doctor Strange tells him. "It's unlikely to do any harm."

"It kicked me through an exhibit."

"It's an object of worship. Or rather a fraction of one. Quite harmless in the hands of even the worst egomaniac, but placed in the vicinity of an altar, fueled by genuine belief, it's capable of causing hallucinations."

"Tactile hallucinations?"

Doctor Strange smiles. "Yes and no. I suspect that if someone were to spend the night, like you did, they would experience very vivid dreams. However, since the exhibit was uniquely devoted to you, you were the only one capable of triggering anything physical. It was created with the intent to induce a religious experience in pilgrims, to be used by actual gods."

"I'm not a god."

"You're a sufficiently legendary figure, who miraculously returned from the grave, and who has been elevated to an icon status. That is sufficient to trigger a basic belief." Strange is smiling as he delivers the little speech, but Steve is finding it a little less amusing. "Of course, there's the not so small issue of you having spilled blood on the exhibit."

"By accident!"

"That's plenty."

"It is still dangerous."

Doctor Strange smiles. "Only for you."

"Me?"

"I won't bore you with the inscriptions, but the gist of it is that the artefact is as much an amplifier as it is a trap. It was intended to build places of power, which it did, by absorbing and reflecting whatever you felt most strongly."

Steve stares at the projection and feels his jaw move. Felt most strongly... As he stood in that museum, what did he feel? Abandonment, weakness, loss. Guilt. Anger.

"It makes no sense," he says, shaking his head. "If it was taking what I was feeling, why did I not feel better?"

"Absorbing is not the same as taking it, not when it comes to emotion, Captain."

"What would happen if someone removed it?"

"Right now? Nothing. It doesn't have the capacity to be reprogrammed once triggered. The worst that could have happened without your involvement is someone who sleeps on top of it would be having a very vivid dream involving you. Removing it, on the other hand, would require disassembling a noteworthy piece of floor."

"Floor?"

"The artifact is a stone, inlaid in the floor of the museum, under its surface."

"There's no chance it can hurt someone?"

"It's unlikely. I took measures to deactivate it, sever all connections to your person, and I will have it monitored, but it is nothing to worry about."

"I see." Steve bites back the instinctive need to go and remove the offending rock, blast it into space, and says, "Thank you, Doctor. Your help is appreciated."

"Mr. Stark has my number, for future consultations," the man says, holds out his hands and disappears through an orange circle.

"So that guy is a weirdo," Tony says.

"Thank you for dealing with this. Take care of yourself."

"Wait."

Steve pauses, his hand extended over the control beads. He slowly withdraws, staring at the projection of Tony.

"I—regret blowing off his arm."

Steve feels his heart constrict. "Tony—"

"I was pissed off at you, like you wouldn't believe, and I don't regret punching you. I don't even regret punching him all that much. Maybe a little. But you were right, in the end. It wasn't him. I've no right to be angry at him."

"You have a right, Tony."

"But I shouldn't be."

Steve takes a deep breath. "You'd have to be… I don't know what you'd have to be not to be angry at him. I'm sure any human being would be." He lets a moment pass. "You shouldn't have tried to kill him, though. You shouldn't have blown his arm off."

"Yeah, well, you should have told me."

"Take it out on me, next time, not him."

"All my other relatives died of natural causes, unless you know something I don't, for a change."

"No, Tony—"

"Jesus, do you ever just shut up." Tony flexes his fingers, picks up a screwdriver and starts fiddling. "So anyway, I've made this thing that lets you view memories. Lets you reframe them, make them go your way."

"That… sounds horrifying."

"It can't do anything to your head directly. But I've done research, and initial trials with veterans are very promising. PTSD is way down, that kind of thing. There's no real way to test against conditioning, but we've had a couple of addicts and they seem to be improving. All above board, FDA approved. Rhodey had independent experts run seminars for the review boards, so that they can understand the process before making a decision."

Steve fights for breath. "Tony—"

"So if your… friend feels like it, I can pull some strings. Maybe reserve a spot. I could even have the tech shipped to where you need it. My expense."

"Tony, thank you."

"But?"

"We're… we got help. The doctors here managed to deal with the conditioning. Bucky's safe now."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

Tony reaches for a wrench, weighs it in his hand. "So I basically wasted three months going through the whole clinical trial bullshit."

"Sounds like you're helping a lot of people," Steve says quietly.

"Sounds like you finally learned to sit one out. It's good. The psychiatrists we have working on the BARF trials tell me it's healthy not to take on more responsibility than you can handle. I think they're quacks, to a man, but what do I know."

Steve bites back a question, forces the innate desire to know deep down. "It's been hard."

"Figures." Tony makes a show of looking around, even though Steve knows for a fact that the Wakandan communicator from his end just show Steve: Steve in worn linen pants and a plain shirt, held at the waist with a sash, everything smudged with grass stains. He hasn't shaved in weeks, and his hair is long enough he needs to comb it on the regular. "You're with him now, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Tell him… Tell him to look after you. Because you're a dick, and you need a babysitter."

"Tony…"

"Also, for whatever it's worth, I forgive him. Bye."

The projection flickers and disappears and Steve stands there, staring at the specks of dust floating through the sunbeam. The edge of the shadow of the doorway creeps further into the hut, muting the color-changing fabrics in the rugs. Steve only moves when the light reaches the beads, whose shadow shimmers with hint of violet. He loops the beads around his wrist as he goes outside.

Down the grassy knoll, past the trees, there's the shed, and behind the shed there is Bucky, sunning himself as a curious goat nibbles on his hair.

"Cut that out," he grumbles, sitting up. "Hey – how did it go?"

Steve swallows. The goat butts the fabric wrapped around Bucky's left shoulder, lets out a challenging bray, and skips away to pick another fight.

"Steve?"

"Good. It went good. It's settled." Steve sits down on the grass, picks a blade to worry at. "Tony is making this… thing. To review and redo memories. He offered to ship it to us."

"Oh."

"He said he forgives you. And that he's sorry he hurt you."

Bucky's jaw clenches.

"He also said to tell you to look after me. Because I'm a dick, he says, and I need a babysitter."

"What else is new," Bucky says, and his hand trembles against his knee.

The goat ambles back, butts his hand with its head, and Bucky scratches gently behind its ears, as the animal turns its head back and forth, directing the scratching where it wants them.

"I'm here."

Bucky's hand stops. Slowly he takes it back, drops it onto his knee, to the goat's obvious disapproval. "You are here."

"I want to stay. If you let me."

"I always want you to stay with me."

Steve does not wince, and he manages, he truly does, even if it comes at a cost. Not that it makes a lick of difference, because Bucky's not even looking at him.

"I wasn't ready before." He looks at the goat, and tells her, "I don't think you were ready, either."

Steve meets the goat's gaze. He maintains eye contact as he tangles his fingers with Bucky's and squeezes. "I should have been."

"It doesn't work like that."

"It should!"

"Yeah, would be great if you could just push a button and become something other people need, right?" Bucky looks at Steve then. "You get there when you get there."

"Now you're just being a dick."

"How am _I_ being a dick?"

Steve looks away, grips the sash he's wearing. "I truly want to stay."

"I know, Stevie. I know. I think I'm ready to want you to."

The sun, eventually, dips below the horizon, setting the lake on fire. They watch it go; they watch the sky turn a million colors and then fade into navy and black. They watch the myriads of stars fill out the endless abyss above them.

Steve gets up. "Let's go inside," he says, and starts walking. Bucky will see that the goat is in the shed before he comes in, which should give him enough time to get started on the food, maybe get a fire going. They don't need it, not really, but nights are starting to get cold towards morning, and Bucky hogs the covers, and then makes the most pitiful noises when Steve tries to take them back.

The little hut shimmers with color when he activates the fairy lights. Steve lets out a pleased huff. They were his idea, they were a good one, and no matter what Bucky grumbles under his breath, Steve knows he loves them.

Which, honestly: Steve loves that most of all.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so this story was a bit of a trip. Most of it came into existence as a much more fantastic adventure with a reality-altering artifact, which unfortunately didn't really want to get written, so it was repurposed into Steve's search for something in his life that is not an endless contest of wills. Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> If you ever want to scream about Bucky, and Steve, [come find me on tumblr](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/). :)


End file.
